Mexico detains suspect over 49 bodies found near Texas

The Mexican army says it has detained a man suspected of taking part in the killings of 49 people whose mutilated bodies were found near the Texas border in May.

The army says in a statement released Friday that Jose Ricardo Barajas Leon was detained Tuesday in Nuevo Leon state, where the hacked-up bodies were found.

It says Barajas is among 37 alleged members of the Zetas drug cartel who broke out of a Nuevo Leon state prison in February.

The army says Barajas told investigators that another cartel member gave him a car carrying people who were gagged and had their feet and hands tied and that he helped kill them.

Three other men have been detained in the case.

Monterrey

The 49 headless, dismembered bodies were found along a stretch of highway in Mexico on May 14, 2012.

The mutilated bodies "scattered in a pool of blood"—some with their hands and feet "hacked off," according to the Associated Press—were discovered by local authorities on the edge of the town of San Juan on a road that connects Monterrey to the Texas border.

The bodies were thought to have been dumped there by a drug cartel, authorities said. A welcome sign near the killing field was filled with graffiti with the message, "100% Zeta."

Zetas is one of the two largest drug cartels in Mexico. The other is the Sinaloa Cartel.

"This continues to be violence between criminal groups," Jorge Domene, a state security spokesman, said in a news conference on Sunday. "This is not an attack against the civilian population."

But the escalating violence between the two cartels has resulted in a recent rash of symbolic slayings.

On April 17, according to the AP, mutilated bodies of 14 men were left in a minivan in downtown Nuevo Laredo. On May 5, the bodies of 23 people were found, some hanging from a bridge and others decapitated and dumped near city hall. On May 9, 18 dismembered bodies were discovered outside Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city.

Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey are considered Zetas territory, while Guadalajara has been controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel.

In September, a Sinaloa drug gang dumped 35 bodies in Veracruz, Mexico. In August, a Zetas attack on a Monterrey casino left 52 dead.

Domene said Sunday's victims 43 men and 6 women would be hard to identify because of "the lack of heads, hands and feet."

Since 2006, when Mexico's President Felipe Calderon announced a crackdown on cartels, more than 47,500 people have been killed in drug-related violence.